Types and stereotypes is the fourth and last volume of a path-breaking multinational literary history that incorporates innovative features relevant to the writing of literary history in general. Instead of offering a traditional chronological narrative of the period 1800-1989, the History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe approaches the region’s literatures from five complementary angles, focusing on literature’s participation in and reaction to key political events, literary periods and genres, the literatures of cities and sub-regions, literary institutions, and figures of representation. The main objective of the project is to challenge the self-enclosure of national literatures in traditional literary histories, to contextualize them in a regional perspective, and to recover individual works, writers, and minority literatures that national histories have marginalized or ignored. Types and stereotypes brings together articles that rethink the figures of National Poets, figurations of the Family, Women, Outlaws, and Others, as well as figures of Trauma and Mediation. As in the previous three volumes, the historical and imaginary figures discussed here constantly change and readjust to new political and social conditions. An Epilogue complements the basic history, focusing on the contradictory transformations of East-Central European literary cultures after 1989. This volume will be of interest to the region’s literary historians, to students and teachers of comparative literature, to cultural historians, and to the general public interested in exploring the literatures of a rich and resourceful cultural region.

"Types and stereotypes" is the fourth and last volume of a path-breaking multinational literary history that incorporates innovative features relevant to the writing of literary history in general. Instead of offering a traditional chronological narrative of the period 1800-1989, the "History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe" approaches the region s literatures from five complementary angles, focusing on literature s participation in and reaction to key political events, literary periods and genres, the literatures of cities and sub-regions, literary institutions, and figures of representation. The main objective of the project is to challenge the self-enclosure of national literatures in traditional literary histories, to contextualize them in a regional perspective, and to recover individual works, writers, and minority literatures that national histories have marginalized or ignored. "Types and stereotypes" brings together articles that rethink the figures of National Poets, figurations of the Family, Women, Outlaws, and Others, as well as figures of Trauma and Mediation. As in the previous three volumes, the historical and imaginary figures discussed here constantly change and readjust to new political and social conditions. An Epilogue complements the basic history, focusing on the contradictory transformations of East-Central European literary cultures after 1989. This volume will be of interest to the region s literary historians, to students and teachers of comparative literature, to cultural historians, and to the general public interested in exploring the literatures of a rich and resourceful cultural region."

Continuing the work undertaken in Vol. 1 of the History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, Vol. 2 considers various topographic sites—multicultural cities, border areas, cross-cultural corridors, multiethnic regions—that cut across national boundaries, rendering them permeable to the flow of hybrid cultural messages. By focusing on the literary cultures of specific geographical locations, this volume intends to put into practice a new type of comparative study. Traditional comparative literary studies establish transnational comparisons and contrasts, but thereby reconfirm, however inadvertently, the very national borders they play down. This volume inverts the expansive momentum of comparative studies towards ever-broader regional, European, and world literary histories. While the theater of this volume is still the literary culture of East-Central Europe, the contributors focus on pinpointed local traditions and geographic nodal points. Their histories of Riga, Plovdiv, Timişoara or Budapest, of Transylvania or the Danube corridor – to take a few examples – reveal how each of these sites was during the last two-hundred years a home for a variety of foreign or ethnic literary traditions next to the one now dominant within the national borders. By foregrounding such non-national or hybrid traditions, this volume pleads for a diversification and pluralization of local and national histories. A genuine comparatist revival of literary history should involve the recognition that “treading on native grounds” means actually treading on grounds cultivated by diverse people.

National literary histories based on internally homogeneous native traditions have significantly contributed to the construction of national identities, especially in multicultural East-Central Europe, the region between the German and Russian hegemonic cultural powers stretching from the Baltic states to the Balkans. History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, which covers the last two hundred years, reconceptualizes these literary traditions by de-emphasizing the national myths and by highlighting analogies and points of contact, as well as hybrid and marginal phenomena that traditional national histories have ignored or deliberately suppressed. The four volumes of the History configure the literatures from five angles: (1) key political events, (2) literary periods and genres, (3) cities and regions, (4) literary institutions, and (5) real and imaginary figures. The first volume, which includes the first two of these dimensions, is a collaborative effort of more than fifty contributors from Eastern and Western Europe, the US, and Canada.The four volumes of the History comprise the first volume in the new subseries on Literary Cultures.

Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective is a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). Initiated in 1996 and launched in 1999, it aims at finding suitable methods and approaches for studying and analysing literature globally, emphasizing the comparative and intercultural aspect. Even though we nowadays have fast and easy access to any kind of information on literature and literary history, we encounter, more than ever, the difficulty of finding a credible overall perspective on world literary history. Until today, literary cultures and traditions have usually been studied separately, each field using its own principles and methods. Even the conceptual basis itself varies from section to section and the genre concepts employed are not mutually compatible. As a consequence, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the interested layperson as well as for the professional student, to gain a clear and fair perspective both on the literary traditions of other peoples and on one's own traditions. The project can be considered as a contribution to gradually removing this problem and helping to gain a better understanding of literature and literary history by means of a concerted empirical research and deeper conceptual reflection. The contributions to the four volumes are written in English by specialists from a large number of disciplines, primarily from the fields of comparative literature, Oriental studies and African studies in Sweden. All of the literary texts discussed in the articles are in the original language. Each one of the four volumes is devoted to a special research topic.

The collection of essays The Avant-garde and the Margin: New Territories of the Modernist Avant-garde refigures the critical and historical picture of the modernist avant-garde by introducing a variety of less-commonly discussed geo-artistic sites and dynamics. The contributors explore the multifaceted relations established between the avant-garde â oecentersâ (France, Germany, England, and others) and their counterparts in the cultural â oeperipheryâ (Greece, India, Japan, Poland, Quebec, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia), as well as the unique artistic and literary dialogues which these encounters engendered. The primary concern of the anthology is the set of relations established between the center and the margin, the redefinition of which was pivotal for the formulation of the modernist avant-garde aesthetic project itself. While enriching the kaleidoscopic picture of modernism, the essays in this collection also offer new methodological approaches to this polychrome cultural image. In this way, the collection avoids the pitfalls of both the traditional diffusionist/Eurocentric model of the world and the more recent over-relativization of the positions of the margin and the center. In their stead, the anthology proposes a hermeneutics of encounter that is simultaneously â oespatialâ and â oehistorical, â aware of its limits but convinced of its own necessity.

Few states have fought as hard or as long to be established as that of the Republic of Bulgaria. The Bulgarians have over the centuries created their own principalities, kingdoms, and republics only to have them crushed by stronger entities, including the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. While recently, the communist regime was largely dominated by and overly submissive to the Soviet Union. Fortunately, about 15 years ago, a new republic arose, which began revamping the economy, reviving the political life, and forging a new place in Europe. The A to Z of Bulgaria contains more than 600 cross-referenced entries on Bulgarian historical periods, places, terms, organizations, events, and personalities. The number of entries, dealing with historical figures and events, has been considerably enlarged, and all of the entries of the first edition that have remained were carefully updated. The newest insights of Bulgarian historiography as practiced in Bulgaria and abroad are also reflected. In addition, the book includes a brief introduction into Bulgarian history from the earliest times until mid-2005 (including the formation of the current cabinet), an easy-reference chronology of Bulgarian history, several maps, and lists of Bulgarian political parties, administrations, and leaders. A comprehensive bibliography is included to facilitate further reading on Bulgaria and Bulgarian history.